Japan is an outlier for numerous reasons, the biggest of which is that housing value there decreases over time (without going into the causes, the result is a feedback loop where housing isn’t built to last because it’s a poor long-term investment, so it depreciates like other semi-short-lived products, such as cars). This isn’t something the government planned, it came about naturally. So I wouldn’t say they’ve “solved” housing so much as their situation has made it a non-issue.

It’s not a difficult bar (heh) to clear. Keep a stock of frozen pizzas on hand, have a cheap countertop pizza oven, bam, food requirement satisfied.

Something tells me audiences in 1952 had slightly different tastes. Also the 1920s probably felt a lot more relevant; hardly anyone alive today remembers the silent-to-talkie transition, but it would have been an experience that many folks had personally witnessed back then.

You’re getting downvotes because you’re citing incel talking points.

I haven’t seen a TV ad in years; who’s out there talking about Pueblo?

Aspen has been experiencing a deep housing crisis for years. They have to bus in most of their workers from nearby towns because no one who has to work for a living can afford to live in Aspen. Now there’s a worker shortage because no one can afford to live in the outlying towns either.

For NM I’d say Roswell; 5th largest city (48k population) but well known b/c aliens

I think Seville and Pamplona are well known, for the Barber of Seville and the running of the bulls respectively.

I run outdoors year-round in weather down to 20°F in a climate with high humidity. Above 40°F I wear old beat-up tshirts, a thick hoodie, and leggings-style running pants. Below 40°F I replace the T-shirt with an REI house-brand light- or mid-weight base layer, and I toss a pair of cotton exercise pants over the running pants (I bought those years ago for less than $15) and wear a cheap woven hat and my junkiest gloves. If it’s raining I’ll replace the heavy hoodie with a water-repellant windbreaker + light weight hoodie.

In other words my running wardrobe is comprised almost entirely of my oldest, most beat-up clothes, most of which were originally just cotton or other cheap non-technical materials purchased years ago at a fast-fashion store at the mall or used from a sporting goods store. I do invest in decent socks (I highly recommend darn tough for their durability), but unless you’re braving truly cold temps, very long workouts, or cannot return indoors shortly after working out,* you really don’t need anything fancy for year-round exercise. For what it’s worth I’m also a woman and I get cold very easily.

*The main problem with cotton is that it will not keep you warm when wet, so if you like to take a long cool down walk or hang out on a park bench for thirty minutes post-workout you should go with wool or synthetic material so you don’t freeze in your sweat-soaked clothes. But as long as you’re returning to a warm indoor space before your exercise warmth dissipates, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Obligatory: I am not a doctor, I don’t know your life.

Jumping off the other comment suggesting a low-fodmap diet, do you have other health problems? What sounds like an extremely unbalanced diet (possibility in combination with a round of antibiotics or an episode of food poisoning) may have resulted in a condition called SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth), specifically an overgrowth of methane-producing bacteria. I’d recommend getting tested.

Crazy thought, but what if it differed by industry? Something like blue collar jobs get Monday off, white collar gets Friday off. That way office workers can for example more easily stay home to get their cable serviced and plumbers can more easily meet with a mortgage agent. Obviously because of overlap it’s not perfect (office workers can’t meet with mortgage agent, plumbers can’t get their cable serviced), but there’s a huge issue currently with people working 9-5 M-F being unable to access services that are also only available 9-5 M-F, so this would at least distribute things a little more. (This kind of thing already exists for some industries like restaurants, where W-Su workweeks are common)

I assume the idea is to be like the seatbelt beeps: they prevent the unwanted behavior by being too annoying to ignore for more than a few seconds.

Hence why the members of c/fuckcars are so intense (I include myself in this).

The only practical way to avoid exposure to society’s car dominance in your everyday life is to live far from society… Which ironically forces you to own a car and drive to get literally anywhere.

And this is in 2015, after we’d recovered from the great recession but before the housing/rental market forced a lot of families back into multi-generational housing situations.

To your “edit” point: Don’t take a handful of downvotes personally; it’s pretty easy to do accidentally on mobile so they may have been unintentional

Agree with everyone else that this isn’t normal for someone your age and get a second opinion.

However addressing your other questions: you’re at an age where lifestyle starts to really matter. Diet, exercise, ergonomics, environmental exposure to pollution/toxins, alcohol/drug use, sleep habits: these are all things that many healthy young adults can avoid having to worry about… until suddenly they can’t anymore. It is common, especially starting around age 30, to find there’s unhealthy behaviors from your teens and 20s that you just can’t do or do to excess anymore. It’s different for everyone; for some people it’s that they can’t sleep on a crappy mattress anymore, or drink certain types of liquor, or pull all nighters, or eat garbage, etc etc.

So while it sounds like you have some personal health issues outside of what’s “normal,” you still are at an age where the cumulative effects of a poor lifestyle can start to catch up to you. I think a lot of people greatly underestimate how sedentary their lifestyles are in particular, and of all the behaviors to change for the better as you age, going from sedentary to active is probably the hardest, given that our world is built to keep us sitting: sitting in our cars, sitting at our desks, sitting on our couches, basically sitting from the moment we wake until we go to sleep. Humans never lived like this until very recently: basically every decade since the personal automobile became the standard mode of transportation it’s steadily gotten worse. So yes, definitely do some doctor shopping, but now is also a great age to take stock in your lifestyle and how you’re treating your body. Because yes, it does get a little harder each year, but the speed of which it gets harder is at least partially up to you.

Also dependent on the state. Some states mandate minimum sick leave, others don’t. Then there’s the issue of paid vs unpaid: if you’re living paycheck to paycheck it doesn’t matter if you have all the unpaid sick leave in the world, you’re not going to use it because you literally can’t afford to.

This appears to be a case of “best practices” that’s perhaps so good it’s excessive when put together. I’ll try to explain as succinctly as I can.

As you can see in these two examples, having the pedestrian crosswalk to a bus stop raised where it crosses the bike lane is a standard design. The floating bus island reduces bus-bike conflict and speeds up bus time by removing the need to merge in and out of the travel lane. Meanwhile it also preserves the protected bike lane and, depending on design, gives folks waiting for the bus a nice space not immediately next to automotive traffic to sit/stand. However this design introduces potential pedestrian-bike conflict, especially in urban contexts where road space is cramped, visibility is poor, and/or people exiting the bus or moving from the sidewalk to the bus island do not have a lot of space and may unexpectedly (from the perspective of bike riders) enter the bike lane. Rushing to catch a bus that’s about to depart especially can cause people to have blinders and suddenly enter into the bike lane without looking because they’re too focused on the bus. For accessibility reasons it’s best to have the path across the bike lane raised to sidewalk level but only for the duration of the crossing (otherwise you end up with people walking or even standing around waiting in the bike lane).

Finally there’s the fragile political alignment of people on foot and people on bicycles; these two groups should be allies in the fight against car dominance but our road and even recreational systems have often pitted the two against each other: it’s very common to hear pedestrians especially complain about near-misses with bicycles, particularly on shared paths (“I was walking my dog and this speeding cyclist appeared out of nowhere and almost ran us over!” “I was riding my bike and this inattentive pedestrian’s dog abruptly jumped into my path and I had to swerve to avoid them both!”). Reducing conflict between these two groups of road users to keep them allied is critical for political reasons in many places, and this means slowing cycling speed near the conflict zone (via the speed bump) while also keeping the conflict zone reduced to just one or maybe two specific crossing areas (indicated by the elevated crossing).

All the above seems like overkill in the example cited above because these “best practices” were designed for cramped urban environments, such as major automotive corridors with multiple lanes through city centers that recently had a lane or two converted to bike/bus/ped infrastructure via a major “road diet” or bus enhancement project. But here there’s a huge bus island, an extra wide bike lane (because it’s for two-way use), great visibility, the waiting area is on the bus island rather than the sidewalk, etc. so while these best practices probably are still effective, they aren’t as necessary for reducing bike-ped conflict as in other contexts. As to why there’s no speed bump in the automotive lanes, the bus island itself may provide sufficient traffic calming by breaking up the monotony of the roadway, and most importantly, a speed bump would greatly reduce comfort of bus riders. Speed bumps are not meant as “punishment” to one form of transportation or another; they’re a tool that’s only rolled out to solve a specific issue.

I hope this helps explain why this spot is designed as it is, and why this is a poor example of “unfair” road design.

Millennial here. My impression is we’re the largest generation on this platform, but I could be wrong.

I’ll check it out, thanks!